


The Offering

by Frayach



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Harry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 14:32:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6332857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco's sole desire is to give himself up to something larger - and greater - than himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Offering

**Author's Note:**

> I was digging through my old stories on LJ and found this creepy little gem.

 

He shouldn’t be beautiful when he’s like this. But Merlin forgive me, he is. At least to me. His fingers tapping on the greasy tabletop, as though he’s playing a piano, are strong and made for hard work, for the flourish of complex spells and the vanquishing of foes. They’re more nimble than they’ve a right to be, and they move with lightning speed. I wonder if he hears music. I wonder who the composer is. Himself of somebody else? Some long dead madman in muddy robes and even muddier boots. An outcast like him, tromping lonely paths in lonely hills and alleys littered with refuse, the lit windows of lives being lived over his head, and rats swarming at his heels. I don’t ask, and he doesn’t volunteer to answer my unspoken question.

 

It’s no secret. Perhaps it never truly had been. But there’d been no way for him to deny it after he’d carved that scar of his with a butter knife in the presence of a hundred Yuletide party-goers. Even I was there, which is saying something. The Minister’s secretary must have reached deep into his bag of potential invitees. They all know (although they cannot prove it) that I brew and sell illegal potions. I’m too clever for them by half, and so last Solstice found me tipping back glasses of champagne with the likes of Granger and Shacklebolt and all the other heroes of the Second War, Harry most conspicuous among them – or at least to me. I watched him, always with one eye on his movements no matter who I was talking to at the moment. In contravention of the invitations’ express instructions to wear anything _but_ black, he was clothed head to toe in sable velvet, the only extravagance being the dragon hide boots and the mink fur collar. He was bold, defiant and obviously dangerous. I should know: I’ve lived with dangerous people since my infancy. They have a certain look in their eyes, a certain carriage, and even a certain smell: cold and dark like a winter’s night, star-pricked and carelessly cruel. Overnight, it seemed, Harry had become my kind of man.

 

So I’d gone over to him. Stroked my hand through the thick fur against his white neck. I don’t believe in preambles. Not anymore. Not now. Not when Harry is on the brink of bringing the world to its knees. I want too much to be there when he does; I want _him_ too much, and clearly time was, and still is, limited. He was an exploding snap on the verge of exploding. I watched him start with surprise and then turn his face to kiss the inside of my wrist. People stared. I didn’t care, and when his fringe fell away from his brow, I saw it. Fresh blood and the sign of trauma by a dull instrument. Far from surrendering his identity, it seemed that he’d finally succumbed. Finally embraced it.

 

_Malfoy_ , he says and nothing else. Over the past year he’s grown incapable of saying much more than those two syllables. I feel my blood sing with self-importance and seize his ever-moving hands. _Potter,_ I reply, and he laughs, the sound light-hearted and frighteningly unsuitable. His fingers are like lit wands, hot and dancing with a restlessness that he feels all the time now. His hair is a _nox_. And, of course. It goes without saying. His eyes a Killing Curse green. How could I have missed it all these years? The Dark Lord’s kiss on the baby’s brow, bestowing scar tissue like a benediction. It bleeds all the time now. He can’t seem to stop picking and picking and picking at it.

 

I’ve considered whether I’m using him or whether he’s using me. The distinction isn’t clear, and I don’t care what the answer is. The answer is as ever-shifting as he is; he moves like a mirage on a Muggle motorway, first here, then there, walking over the brow of a hill, wand drawn and merciless. I picture it when we fuck. Picture how, in the end, I will probably meet my death at his hands. It is not as distressing a thought as I might have imagined.

 

He draws his thumb across my palm, smearing the life line with a scalding heat, a deadly intent. He loves me. I know this. In the only way he’s capable of loving anyone anymore. _What’s in your head?_ I asked him once, and he smiled that smile – fleeting as the flash of a blade, drawn from the deep pocket of a robe, revealed for the sole purpose of inflicting fear, a glimpse of a threat. But he will not hurt me tonight. I know this. It will not be slow. It’ll be as quick and deliberate as his kiss. His mood is too high, soaring above this sordid world and looking down from a great height. Last night, he burned all of his furniture with a casual _Incendio_ , and I slept on the floor, drifting off to the cadence of his boots on the marble floor. Now and then, he crouched and traced strange runes in the ashes with the tip of his wand. In the morning, after he’d gone, I tried to read them but couldn’t. They were part of a dead language seldom spoken these days. I shivered, for the first time, with fear. Fear and ever-present arousal.

 

Sometimes I think to myself: is this how my father felt? Or more apt perhaps, is this how Aunt Bella felt? The laser beam of focus on a single man? Am I merely following in the footsteps of both mother and father? Is it in my blood to cringe on the floor before the boots of madmen and proclaim my undying devotion? If so, do I even care? Before me, Harry drinks a glass of wine in one smooth swallow. His throat is whiter than mine. He doesn’t get out much these days.

 

To say that I would do anything for him would be an understatement; the things he’s already asked me to do would earn me the inside of Azkaban for the rest of my life. I did them without regret. Sometimes he relished in the recitation of the details, and other times he didn’t even ask. The red stain of the wine on his lips is too bright; the blood on his scar is too bright. Tonight, like every night, he may do to me what he wishes. I will crawl willingly; I will beg to be allowed to beg. And he will grant my wish only if he finds himself in a generous turn of mind.

 

Months ago, when he was still just Harry for hours or sometimes even days at a time, I asked him whether he was his own man or merely a pawn of dead men. He didn’t answer because he didn’t know and rather than admit that fact, he responded with a question of his own, _For God’s sake, Draco! Why are you here?_ In certain moods he couldn’t imagine an answer that would make sense, and I wouldn’t tell him. Dear demented Harry, bare necked by the fire in that way that made me have to touch him. Lingeringly. Tenderly. His time is running out and so, too, is mine. I know this; I’ve known it for a long time.

 

_Malfoy,_ he says again, his pupils dilated to what must be the point of pain – the reason now why he avoids the sun, avoids fire and even candlelight. He is the endpoint of my world, the epicentre of my worth, the last word of forgiveness before the Killing Curse is cast. I bring his hand to my mouth and kiss his palm. It is a gesture of love that is not out of place – even under the circumstances. He accepts it with the brief closing of his eyes. His lashes are as black as his robes; I would tell him that he’s a cliché except that he isn’t. Everything is a mere mimicry of this man. This moment. I am swept up and swept away, and that, too, is not a cliché.

 

_It’s time_ , he says, still speaking in only two syllables. His hand drops and slips around the curve of my throat, and I think – fleetingly – that whoever it was that invented throats must not have loved mankind. Nothing but skin and a few tendons between life and death. I feel him squeeze. He needs a willing victim, and I never pretended I’d be anything but. My blood sings again with the knowledge that he will never forget me. That I will be his first and he will be my last.

 

_I know_ , I say and tip my head back. Standing, he brushes my mouth with his own. For a moment he tastes like Harry. Just Harry, and I feel a single tear escape my eye. The end will be swift and efficient. He will not linger. I close my eyes and offer myself up.

 

The last thing I know is his breath in my ear. My name. The part of it I’d thought he’d long ago forgotten. The part he used to whisper in the dark. The part that makes me a willing sacrifice and not just his victim. _Draco._ he says. _Draco_.


End file.
